


And Her Eyes Were Wild

by waitingtobelit



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Family, Fantasy, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Mythology - Freeform, Romance, Romanticism, Supernatural Elements, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:10:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingtobelit/pseuds/waitingtobelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius meets a lark in the woods. He emerges a fairy's child. AU based on Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" with elements of Greek mythology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Her Eyes Were Wild

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in movie/musical verse with details from the novel mixed in.
> 
> Warnings: I don't think there's anything particularly triggering in here, but Marius does undergo a lot of severe emotional/traumatic distress and Eponine's death as well as those of the Amis are mentioned throughout with references to bloodshed. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Les Miserables, Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," or any element of mythology mentioned within. This was written purely for recreational purposes.

He wavers between the conscious and the state of dreaming as a mourner wanders through a decrepit cemetery. He looks for the familiar but finds only dust and half-remembered names. Yet he can taste the starlight falling over him just as much as he can smell the corpses and the bloodshed he’s left behind. The morning the barricade fell moves through him like hymns in praise of the Holy Spirit. He stumbles over roots or maybe limbs separated from their bodies as gunpowder and soldiers flash before his vision, but he does not fall.

Still, the Paris underbelly permeates through his uncertainty. Excrement and the scraps of food too sickly even for the rats leak with the mud through the cracks in the streets. A ghoulish light occasionally creeps behind his eyes as his body sways, its movement dependent upon a source that moves haphazardly beneath him. This and the caress of muck against his exposed, bleeding skin tethers him to this underworld even as his feet touch down in the grass of a meadow miles, perhaps even worlds, away from the city.

Yet while the noxious odors of sewage lingers, the rest of the world dissipates to transform into a landscape out of one of Wordsworth’s poems. Marius strolls in a forest, trees reaching for the stars like fallen angels yearning for heaven. Their bark shines ebony in the dark. Night elongates their crooked branches into shadows that run as rampant as the river that flows beside him, cackling in time with the flowing water in a morbid symophony. Sometimes the moon glows silver; other times it shines yellow, almost like the flesh of a curious man prodding at a prone, almost certainly dead figure below him.

Marius still feels the bullet that pierced his abdomen, the pain remaining even as his vision quivers beneath the oncoming darkness. He struggles against the sleep that pulls him further from Paris and from Cosette. He digs his feet into the ground; he lifts his head against a stranger’s shoulder. Then he remembers the shouting, the screaming, and the bleeding, and his attempts at protest fall silent once again

He tries not to think of his friends, their desperate cries and the blood blown through the barricades in an unholy tempest of gunfire. His heart lags in his chest, as heavy as the ground is unsteady beneath his feet. He wants to believe that, in spite of the impossible circumstances, their revolution did succeed, that they are all alive and waiting for him now, red flags in hands held high. He shrinks from the wilderness of the obscene nature surrounding him to cling to the twig-thin hope that sings almost mutely in his chest.

 Marius marches forward as though going off to battle with the moonlight that filters his thoughts into incoherent whispers that tug at him from above. The frigid air shackles his movements, rendering him incapable of discerning whether he makes progress at all or the world just shifts underneath his feet.

 Sometimes he moves as though carried on the shoulder of a mysterious savior. He can almost distinguish the outline of a rugged, older man just as he rights himself in the pale starlight peering through splintered branches. The ground embraces his steps with solidarity just as he finds himself entirely emerged in the darkness of the woods.

  “Go back!”

The words, barely whispers, float to him on the breeze as gentle as a lullaby. The words are that of a desperate man trying to repress his own agony. He almost recognizes the voice before realizing he does not know it at all because it died just before he arrived to make amends with it. His fists clench at his sides and the pain throughout his body sharpens.

  “Go back! Turn back my child!”

He sways at the pronouncement of ‘my child.’ His heart aches though he does not understand. His father has been but a ghost to him his entire life. How could he be here now? He pivots so that the trees spin and the stars blur, his desperate pulse racing inside his chest. He needs to see the face of the father he so long revered even as he never truly knew him. His steps grow less steady as he tries to control his rapid breathing.

He collapses then, back upon the shoulder of his mysterious benefactor. The sludge surrounds them like a blanket. He cannot breathe for fear of choking on the sewage that covers his face like a mask. If he tilts his ear to the left, he can make out the vaguest outlines of words. His head proves too heavy to hold, however, and so, with once last glimpse of faded gray, the underworld spins and he awakens once more in a meadow.

Still darkened by night, the grass encircles him like a halo as Marius raises himself on his elbows. He tilts his neck left then right to find strands of vicious emerald clawing towards the sky. Violets, lilies, roses, and lilacs bloom in the midst of this sea of grass; a rather garish garden painted silver by the moonlight. He stands, reaching out to a non-existent hand as he wobbles to his feet. The grass grows as tall as his waist as he takes one uncertain step forward. He feels like a protagonist in one of his beloved penny dreadfuls. (The guilty pleasure he always keeps hidden beneath his mattress and oh God he hopes the National Guard, or, even worse, his grandfather, ever finds them should they decide to peruse his apartment.)

  “Go back! You have so much to live for!”

The voice of his father rings in his head as he falters. He sways. He clings to the words, sacred hymns to be embedded forever in his memory. He does not heed their meaning, nor does he realize their intention as a warning. Indeed, he does not conceive that he might not have a memory to which to return. He stumbles as his arms push through the grass as though he were swimming. The petals mock him with their crooked shapes so like the ugly laughter of the soldiers as they shot Gavroche. Marius can still hear the boy’s speech interrupted as the bullets found their target at last. He has neither the energy for tears nor guilt for failing to keep Gavroche away from the barricades, and yet both trail down his face in streams.

 A twitch in the grass forces him to pivot immediately and face what appears to be a young fawn nibbling in the farthest corner of the meadow, brown fur almost gold beneath the moonlight. He meets the gaze of this creature just as his tears finally cease; he almost falls over at the intense blue of the deer’s eyes, the color of the April sky that now always reminds him of Cosette.

The dirt at his feet shimmers as he steadies himself, clutching at his own pant leg to keep from falling. When next he glances in the direction of the fawn, all breath abandons his body and all sturdiness pools beneath his knees. Cosette’s eyes gaze upon him from beneath her familiar blonde locks and from above the heavenly nightgown she wore that night she met him in her own garden. It takes everything in Marius not to fling himself at her feet.

 “Cosette?” He speaks like a soldier too long on the battlefield without relief. Words weigh down his tongue. Yet, basking in her radiance as he makes his way towards her, he only cares that he can communicate at all with his love.

 Cosette merely smiles as she nods, nightgown fluttering around her like a multitude of butterfly wings. She dazzles in the dark, the brightest star in the night. Marius is so caught up in her he fails to recognize the near identical sorrow to his own that restrains her beautiful mouth in its reluctant smile.

“Can it be you?” He almost makes no sound as he speaks, though the gentle patience in her eyes acknowledges the words. “Do I sleep or am I awake?”

She does not answer him. He tries not to run over to her, keeping in mind the length and the width of grass that separates them as well as his own (usual) lack of coordination, but his limbs appear to mutiny against his better judgment. He does not think it strange that his love should appear to him now, in a world that he believes does not quite exist. After all, she has always appeared when he has the greatest need of her he thinks as he sprints, the sides of his cheeks beginning to ache in the wind as he gains speed. Cosette grows ever closer. Yet just as he almost reaches her, he falls, draped over a man’s shoulder once again.

He hears words but they lack sense. The stench rises around him like a fog, becomes too overwhelming in conjuncture with the pain that flows through him with each step he feels through the stranger’s shoulder. Fever makes him unable to move beyond an occasional tilt of the head, but even that proves too much effort. All of this keeps Marius from Cosette and wreaks havoc upon his already strained heart.

“Cosette?” His voice is weak as he is caught in the dark between Paris and the world beyond his reach. He feels as helpless as a babe, meandering through two worlds. “Cosette, where did you go?”

“Find me now,” he pleads as the pain in his bones begins to recede and he can almost make out the shadows of trees. “Find me here.”

He stumbles into the field with the overgrown grass once more, as the blades kiss at his feet which are now bare, and perhaps have been in this world all this time. The dirt cools the heat of them, maddened by the exhaustion of keeping up between the sewers and the wilderness. The gaze of the stars turns his skin into silver as a chill makes its way down his spine, particular and serpentine. Without her the darkness is overwhelming; he cannot take more of a solitude that has haunted him duly enough in his life.

He breathes only when he catches sight of her again, still standing just out of his reach. He throws himself into her eyes as he moves forward; the wilderness in them unfurls like a gradual tide. Their prowess draws him closer, leading him further out into the strange night.

“No, don’t! Marius, she’s-!” His father’s voice, shrill and desperate, is but a whisper compared to the unspoken words that linger in her fair gaze. Marius does not hear him.

 She says nothing and yet she says everything. Still as a statue, as lovely as the moon above, a vision from a dream or perhaps here with him through her spirit, she calls out to him through her incandescence. He does not know her enough. He will, he promises himself as he ignores his father’s cries and continues walking. He will awake and return to his rooms. He will share with her the brilliance of Goethe; he will write verses of his own for her. He will love her until the end of his days.

He pushes against the absurd grass and flowers as he goes. With each step forward the meadow shoves him back.

Just as he thinks he’s reached her at last his world again shifts. He opens his eyes with minute grace to glimpse the soiled walls of a narrow back alley. The voices he heard before ring louder now.

“Javert, please. He’s standing in his grave!” The stranger who holds him begs. Marius hears the words but he does not process them. His head lolls against that of the stranger, as limp as a broken toy soldier.  

“You move and you die.” Inspector Javert replies, and Marius does not understand because he thought the strange volunteer executed him at the barricade. He thinks perhaps the man carrying him sounds like this particular stranger, but then both men are speaking at once and he can no longer make out their exchange of words. He remains still on the motionless man beneath him.

He hardly has the chance to register his surroundings as he chokes on air and finds his eyes closing once again.

The gentle lull of devoted fingers pulling at a stringed instrument lures him back awake. He opens his eyes to that nothing has changed in this meadow except that the sky grows slightly lighter as awareness clears his vision. The odd flowers sway in a gentle breeze as crooked trees loom in the distance. He inhales as though gulping water, his lungs liberated in this night from the oppression of the sewers.

Yet all this is nothing as the music overwhelms every part of him. Melancholy melody envelopes the meadow as Marius strains forward to hear more of it. He staggers through the grass that snaps against his feet like a mischievous lover as he hunts for both the sound and Cosette.

He finds her standing at the edge of a ring of trees, a halo of violets in her golden hair. Larks and doves both flutter around her as she cradles a lyre the color of her hair to her bosom like a child. She is light and beauty and everything right in the world. Though she stands still she quivers, a leaf straining to be free of its branch in winter. She exudes the sublime in her large eyes as she gestures for him to join her with a quirk of lips that could inspire sonnets.

“Please,” he begs to no one and nothing as he finds the ability to move again. His voice creaks like cracks in ancient wood and his face feels as though it were set ablaze by the light of a torch as he walks towards her.

“No, Marius! No!” His father cries out as Cosette changes songs, from a lament to a gentle expression of joy that reminds Marius of a fairy tale from his childhood. Fairies and elves dance in the pure ecstasy of her song, as compelling as the cry of the raging sea against an empty shore. Thorns pierce his aching feet as he walks forward with no regard to the bushes that guard her.

He reaches Cosette at last, and this time, she does not fade away nor does the world swallow him whole. She halts her lyre playing to reach out for his hand.

Before he can accept her, the trees fall in on themselves as a fog stirs around them. The air he inhales grows sour in his mouth. He trembles violently as ice creeps up his skin; figures paler than the moon emerge from tendrils that rise from the ground like snakes at his feet. He feels the empty space as Cosette lowers her hand and retreats, but soon forgets her absence in the presence of others. He yearns to shut his eyes, to banish the horrible truths written in the phantom faces across from him. But he lacks the strength even to give in to his own denial.

Eponine appears to him first, the sadness in her eyes enhanced by the pallor death has cast so lovingly upon her. Gavroche stands next to her, his bravado making him taller than he ever stood in life. Feuilly, Joly, Bossuet, and Bahorel emerge next, followed by Combeferre and Jehan. Courfeyrac looks upon him with a fond smile slightly wilted by sad resignation. Marius’ heart pounds against chest like a cadged animal straining for freedom. The ghosts of his friends blur through his tears.

“No more, please. No more.” He begs, but God does not listen, just like his grandfather, content to destroy everything right in his life.

Grantaire, drunk now only on the life that used to be, stumbles forward, eyes as morose as the entire expression on Eponine’s face. His right arm hangs in the air as though it were resting on the small of someone’s back.

Last, and worst, of all, Enjolras steps forward, arms outstretched like a martyr, a hole-tattered flag draped across his arm. Marius tries not to look at him. But his head cannot move from beneath the determination in those blue eyes, the steel resolve that resounds beyond his brief time on Earth. The fire of Enjolras’ spirit falters for nothing, not even death, and Marius’ shudders as it burns him now.

All of them wear matching bullet holes and bayonet wounds, a most grotesque collection of beings once bursting to the brim with life. Like Cosette, they remain silent, ghosts without voices. Yet they stare at him with a collective sadness such that hurts worse than the injuries he sustained himself at the barricades.

“No, please, no.” Marius falls to his knees sobbing, unable to bear the weight of the loss of them, all of them. He feels the emptiness of the world without his friends; it digs into his soul like the twisting of a knife and the burning kisses of multiple bullets all at once.

“Marius, don’t worry about them,” his father’s voice somehow reaches him through his agony. “God will watch over them now. Trust me.”

He collapses from his knees to his hands, clawing at the ground as though breaking its flesh might revive that of his fallen friends. He does not ever want to know the other world again. He winces at the scents of the sewers and Inspector Javert and the stranger fighting so hard to save a life that seeks only to no longer exist. He chokes at the thought of a France without the Amis devotion to her liberation, a Paris without inspiration to rile the blood of angry men.

 "Marius, you have to get up.” His father says, so close to him and yet, as he raises his head with reluctance to search in the dark, still invisible. “You have so much to live for. Run! Run!”

 Always, that familiar refrain calling out to him in the dark. He desperately wants nothing more than to run into his father’s arms the way he never was able to in life. He craves to be held like a small child by a father who strokes the pain away while whispering assurances into his hair.

This desperate yearning grants him the strength to bring himself to his feet. The ring of trees becomes a labyrinth as he drags himself to them, arms outstretched to push aside branches and latch onto bark to keep himself standing.

“Marius, listen to me. There is still hope yet.” His father appears to surround him and yet Marius still cannot find him even as the darkness lightens. “Come to me, my child.”

His head perks up and turns behind him as his father’s voice grows louder, emerging from the meadow from which he came. He starts to drag his feet back in that direction, heart leaping at the vague outline of a soldier in the moonlight.

He only gets to take one step before the sensation of a feminine hand clasping his own drives all thoughts of his father and even his friends from his mind. Marius turns to his right to meet Cosette’s gentle gaze, hearing the faintest strands of the lyre even as it rests in her other hand. The night is quieter now, the wood less of a nightmare. His tears falter as his heart becomes tranquil.

Her touch is a balm that instantly soothes the roughest edges of his pain. Incendiary, she stands beside him, tendrils of her hair bringing warmth to his cheeks like flames. The force of her whole being consumes him so that Marius does not see the tears in the corners of her eyes, nor the way she seems to float across the ground. She pulls him as a shepherd would lead a lamb. Each step forward makes him feel less like a shadow, the same hope she inspired in him the night he set eyes upon her in her garden.

Suddenly, he falters, and again the wilderness shifts back to Paris. He has left the sewers now, he realizes as the gilded gold wallpaper and pastel murals of his childhood circle around him like a carousel. The world does not cease to spin even as the shapes of angels above come into focus. The pain throughout his body burns intensely, to the point where he cannot reign in the groans that fall from his mouth. A sudden movement and then the blue eyes of his grandfather, almost the same blue as the painted sky above, loom over him, fear bestowing upon them a strange glint that almost resembles the stirrings of tears. Marius’ mouth twitches. He attempts to speak, but can only manage pained grunts as his vision flickers yet again.

“Doctor, is there anything more to be done?”

Marius does not hear the doctor’s response. The emotion in his grandfather’s voice stuns him as blackness envelopes his vision. He never expected such fragility and desperation from the man who kept him from his father. He didn’t realize the man was capable of feeling anything but selfish desire for women and disdain for the lower classes and the politics that supported them. The sensation is almost enough to inspire more guilt in Marius, who wonders just how long his grandfather has been keeping watch by his bedside.

His eyes open again to the woods before he can fully reconcile the turmoil of his family life within him. He gasps as though he were drowning and just now able to come up for air. The bark of the trees surrounding him prove as detailed as the murals upon his bedroom walls. The grass below his feet caresses them now instead of scratching. The light of the moon and the stars forms more coherently at the edge of the forest where he stands, even as they grow less visible in the unfurling dawn.

“You’re awake now,” Cosette speaks for the first time, catching his gaze with the loveliness of her own as she clasps his hand once more. “Come with me, Marius.”

He cannot find the words to utter a proper response. Her voice fills him with music as they walk further into the woods. He does not know if his feet actually touch the ground or if he floats on clouds behind her. A slight pull in his stomach tells him he is not dreaming, so how is it that his beloved Cosette can possibly be here?

Cosette’s presence silences his questions the same way she drowns out the voice of his father. In her white gown and with her golden hair tied loosely behind her, she glows brighter as the light of the stars and the moon dims the further they immerse themselves in the woods. Though steadfast, there is a wilderness to the way she holds his hand and in her very gait. She startles him when she quickens their pace and when they stop at last. She turns so that she faces him directly, still cradling his hand in her own.

“Why wouldn’t you speak before?” He finally works up the courage to ask, aware for the first time the way his tongue no longer feels like a brick in his mouth. The uncomfortable pull in his stomach deepens.

“You couldn’t hear me, then.” She replies, gently rubbing her thumb across the top of his hand as the bluntness of her answer sinks in with the increasing chill of the night.

Marius does not know how to process this truth. Certainly, he shouldn’t be surprised; he had been badly wounded at the barricades before a stranger dragged him through the sewers of Paris. Even the most respected doctor in the city, the only physician his grandfather would ever allow to set foot in his home, couldn’t pull a miraculous recovery from thin air. Mostly, he finds his heart at ease, even glad. Though, if this Cosette is a dream and not real…

“Am I? Are you?” He squeaks more than asks, gripping her hand tightly and curling the other one by his side into his pant leg. The shadows of trees grow darker as the moonlight grows ever more distant with each passing minute.

“You are, yes.” She says, a melancholy in her eyes that brings to mind both Eponine and Grantaire. “I am so sorry, Marius.”

He gulps and tries to quench the dread that rises from the pit of his stomach to his mouth, like smoke and gunpowder.

“And you?” He repeats as she glances away, clenching her free hand in the gossamer fabric of her gown. He begins to rock on his feet, a nervous habit apparently carried over even in his current state. The grass brushes against his skin and he shivers.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she mutters so quietly he strains to hear. “I was never supposed to fall in love with you.”

Marius sways as though shot again, this time directly in the chest. He drops her hand as he tries to steady himself and the horror that sinks into his veins like a gradual poison, only to almost collapse with the sudden loss of her support.

Cosette rushes to catch him, keeping her right arm around his waist so that he does not hit the ground. It takes everything in him not to weep. Again.

 “What?” The word tumbles out of him as he clasps onto her arm holding him steady. He never imagined death to be so painful, though he supposes it’s only right that the whole of him passes away, not just his physical body. The universe, lodged in the cruel smile of the moon above, seems determined to thrust as much despair upon him as possible.

 “So that night on the Rue Plumet meant nothing?” His voice cracks as he fights to keep his tears at bay. A few prove as stubborn and resistant to reason as the rest of him. He bites his own lip to prevent the rest from falling.

“Marius, listen to me.” Her voice also cracks as she speaks directly into his ear, sending tremors through his skin. “Fantine and I, that is to say, my mother and I, we’re not of the human world. We’re…” She struggles not to sob herself and it only breaks his heart more. “You would call us guardians of sorts.”

“What does that mean?” He feels as though he’s watching a stranger speak through his voice. Numbness falls upon him like a steady rain. He’s uncertain as to how many more of these revelations he can take.

“Marius, I don’t have a lot of time to explain,” Cosette, if that even is her true name, pleads as he manages to right himself with her help. She reaches for his hand again; he is unable to resist the warmth in her small palm, and so finds himself clinging to it with all his might. “Fantine was supposed to lead you here, not I.”

“Are you really called Cosette?” He barely whispers the question and yet she answers as though she were meant to hear it anyway.

“I have many names,” she says, holding his hand close to her stomach. “You know me as Cosette. To some, I am simply a muse. To others, an angel. Once, a man mistook me for Helen of Troy.” She closes her eyes, flinching so quickly he almost misses it.

“I do have a proper name.” The woman he knows as Cosette remarks to the stars rather than to him. “You would not understand it, nor the journey of how I came to be as I stand before you now.”

His skin rustles at her words, as though it might tear away from him at any given moment. He stares at the grass, at the roots of trees, and at the stars above. The light fades the longer he keeps his gaze upon it. He wonders if he might blind himself by staring too long, even at such a minute source of radiance. Her hand in his is the only thing that keeps him tethered to the ground even as it proves the source of every crack running rampant in his soul.

“Marius,” she brings her other hand to cup his face, forcing him to meet her reddened eyes. “Fantine and I both are on Earth to serve. Fantine planted the first seed of goodness in Valjean; I’ve helped to nurture it since. Eponine at least found happiness in childhood because I could draw the negligence of her parents away for a little while.”

Cosette strokes his cheek while she speaks, her tone as supple as the strings of her lyre. His eyes flutter as his limbs hang as heavy as the gnarled branches encircling them.

“And me?” He asks, the words as brittle as the rest of him. “What kind of seed did you plant in me?” He drops her hand to grasp at her face, frightened by the inevitability of her disappearing.

She answers him in kisses, four of them. The first is as fleeting as the strands of her hair as they fall through his fingers. She pulls back to take him in, the blue of her eyes drinking in the green of his own before memorizing the placement of each freckle upon his skin. He tries to kiss her himself but she stops him with two of her pale fingers.

“You? You were so lonely in that apartment of yours, with nothing but your translations and your penny-dreadfuls for company.” Her eyes sparkle as the corners of her mouth quirk. Marius cannot help but squirm at her knowing one of his deepest secrets; a feverish blush illuminates his freckled cheekbones, giving him the appearance of a cherub caught in the splendor of a seraphim.

He forgets for the moment everything to which she has confessed. He ignores the idea of her belonging to a realm separate from his own, the notion of her as a being greater than human. Cosette shines before him as a woman now, her eyes like constellations and her touch like candlelight. His mouth curves upwards as she presses her lips against his for the second time. This time, she lingers and deepens the kiss between them.

Marius knows this cannot last and so throws himself headfirst into her embrace, a reckless sailor giving himself up to the sea in the midst of a brutal storm. His hands descend from her face to her waist so that he fully envelopes her, grasping tightly at her so that she might never go away.

“You needed to know that you were not alone.” She breathes against him when they part. “You needed passion to inspire you in life. But I forgot my place and so I have adored you from the moment I first saw you.”

Marius all but implodes from the joyous crescendo bursting forth in his chest. He makes to speak but she kisses him for a third time, her lips and tongue so deeply entwined with his that she draws forth a helpless moan from the very depths of him. He clings to her as she possessively pulls him in closer. If he were still capable of breathing, she would have stolen all of his breath by now.

“Please, stay with me.” He whines when she pulls back but she shushes him with her two fingers. “Surely, there must be a way-”

“No, Marius.” Cosette pulls slightly away from him, shaking her head. “I already told you. Fantine was supposed to be here in my stead. I am risking everything in guiding you here. We’re almost out of time as it is. I must return before Valjean notices that I am missing. He has need of me, still.”

“But how am I supposed to endure eternity without you?” His delight from mere minutes before turns to ashes in his mouth. Melancholy again settles in his veins, rendering him almost motionless as he holds on to Cosette tighter than before.

“You have your friends,” she smiles though he can hear the tears in her trembling voice. “And you will love again.”

“But I do not want to, ever.” He recoils at the promise even as she caresses him. “You are the only one I will ever love."

“Shh.” She cradles his head to her bosom like a mother comforting a child. “You have suffered enough, Marius. Do not wilt away in paradise on my behalf. I will always watch over you, even if we never see each other again.”

“Don’t say that, please.” He weeps against her chest now, unable to bear this extra burden upon an overly weary soul. “Please don’t leave me. _Please_.”

“Marius.” Cosette tugs him up so that she cradles his face in her hands once more. She runs one hand through his messy, auburn hair as the other runs down his right cheek. “My dearest Marius. You will never be alone again.”

She leans in to rest her forehead against his, identical tears streaming down her face. They stand intertwined, two shadows in the fading night.

“My curse is that I am no longer a being made for love.” She nuzzles him, her nose indenting circles upon his skin. “But Marius, I love you. And I always will. They cannot take that away from me.”

She presses the words into his lips as he grasps at her nightgown to keep holding on; his weary eyes shut on their own accord as she tangles her hand in his. He drinks her in through their joint lips, taking as much of her as he possibly can. He might burst from the crackling embers that burst down his spine at her kiss.

But like the first kiss, this one, too, eventually floats away on the wind. Marius opens his eyes as soon as her lips fade from his to find only the trees and their shadows looking upon him. The abandoned space next to him mirrors the empty place in his soul. The night begins to redress herself in light.

 

\---

 

 “No,” he whimpers as he falls to his knees, clutching at the leaves and other forest debris on the ground. He does not recognize the fading presence of the moon, nor the aging starlight as it retreats. “Come back to me, please.”

“Marius.”

A firm, calloused hand, the hardened hand of a veteran soldier, descends upon his shoulder. Marius’ fists relax their grip upon the ground as the rest of him freezes instinctively at the touch.

“I tried, my child.” His father weeps and Marius wishes desperately the earth would just swallow him whole. Surely, he is caught in some inner circle of hell. “I tried to save you but she wouldn’t let me.”

He rises stumbling over his own limbs at the implication of his Cosette’s intentions, his entire being shaking. He keeps his back to his father and his eyes upon the ground, setting his feet down so as to keep himself from rocking upon them.

“She loves me,” he almost shouts, still in a fervor, “she loves me and she would never do anything to harm me.”

“Marius, I know.” His father replies, squeezing his shoulder. “I only meant that…” His hand loosens slightly on his shoulder as he pauses. “I meant that I was trying to keep you alive, Marius. You’re still so young, and capable of so much more than you realize.”

Marius bites his lip to try and stop the trembling but it only increases the longer his father lets his hand rest on his shoulder. He closes his eyes violently as he clenches his hands into fists by his side. He spent his life in ignorance of such paternal pride. His grandfather only scolded him, taught him to glance with disdain upon classes below him, and to despise a man who did not abandon his only child but was rather cast off by the grandfather. He shakes harder at the tangible proof of all the ways in which his father is not Monsieur Gillenormand.

“I’m sorry.” He collides into his father’s chest without catching a glimpse of his face. He buries his head against his chest, eyes shutting once again as he chokes on a sob. “I’m so sorry, father.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” the colonel says, rubbing soothing circles into his back. “I only wish that you could have lived more.”

“How could I live now?” Marius whimpers into his father’s chest, one hand clenching in the fabric of his coat. He clings with all the willpower of a child woken by a nightmare.

“I know,” the colonel whispers onto his tousled hair. “I saw how much you loved her, Marius.”

“I still do,” he hiccups in the direction of the space between the trees that still resembles Cosette. “I will always love her.”

“Marius, look at me.” His father pleads rather than commands, and the desperation in his request is so urgent that Marius cannot refuse.

He drags his cheek across the navy blue of his father’s military jacket, shining prominently as morning overcomes night, as he at last dares to take in the appearance of the man formerly defined for him by the words of others.

The colonel stands about an inch or more above him, his auburn hair in a similar state of disarray as his own. Staring back at red-rimmed eyes the same shade of green (“Like something out of a fairy tale,” Courfeyrac teased him once), he appears to stand before a mirror. Yet his father’s cheekbones prove less prominent, and his lips don’t bloom upon his face in the manner of his son; stubble litters the sharp line of his jaw whereas Marius’ face remains smooth. The colonel stands tall, shoulders squared in attention as he takes in Marius’ appearance with equal fervor. They have both fought in battle and they have both scorched themselves in the blaze of the aftermath.

 "You remind me so much of her, you know.” The colonel utters the words like a prayer. “Your mother.”

He can only continue to memorize the individual scars scattered upon his father’s cheeks in response, blinking rapidly with his wide mouth partly open. Growing up solely in the company of his grandfather and his aunt, Marius finds it difficult to believe he even has a mother at all. He grew up thinking of the traditional idea of parents as a concept like the myths he studied as a boy – fantastical explanations for the workings of the universe not entirely grounded in reality.

“What?” He does not realize he’s spoken until his father briefly grasps him by the cheek, his touch as warm as the rest of him. The colonel watches him with his mouth curved in a sad smile.

“Her name was Marie. She told me she loved me even when I did not say it back. She sang me lullabies even when I did not rest. Above everything else in the world, she believed in love most of all. You inherited that from her, along with the freckles.” His eyes glint; Marius stares back in awe, his thoughts lingering on how this description of his mother calls to mind Cosette.

“Is she here? Can I see her?” His face hurts from experiencing so many emotions in the span of one night, but even if he were to try, he would never be able to quell the enthusiasm that stretches across his face; from the flush of his cheeks to the newfound light in his eyes. To be reunited with his family is almost enough to quiet Cosette’s song in his heart.

His father says nothing as a crunch of leaves in the distance catches his attention. He releases Marius to walk a few paces to the left. The colonel lets his left arm hang limp like an empty noose while the hand of his right curls into some semblance of a fist. He appears older in the increasing light. Marius gulps as the weight of ugly truth once more settles in his throat.

“I haven’t been able to find her.” He says, keeping his head low to the ground. “I have been searching ever since arriving here.”

“Surely, she’s not…” Marius pales, branches and leaves starting to blur in his vision. His clenches and unclenches his hands rapidly by his side. He tries to comprehend his father experiencing the same devastation as himself and flinches.

“No, no.” The colonel strides back to embrace him again. “Fantine told me she isn’t like her or Cosette.”

“Well then, I’ll help you find her. I will.” He vows against his father’s chest with all the determination of a toddler proudly announcing to the world that he’s not frightened.

The colonel strokes his hair as he holds him close. “Fantine thinks she might be lost. She said to me that sometimes people look back and so they cannot move forward.”

Marius starts at the gravity in the colonel’s voice and looks up to find his father’s eyes knowingly upon him.

“Marius, you cannot dwell here. I could not bear it if you were to become lost too.

 “Please, let me help find her. Let me be of use!” His voice cracks as his eyes start to burn. His father hugs him closer as he finds the world once more rupturing beneath his feet.

“My child, Fantine is helping me. There is nothing here for you but pain. You’ve had more than your share of that in your life already. You must go.”

Marius vehemently shakes his head though the way his heart flinches speaks to the truth in his father’s words.

“As much as I long to keep you with me, you’re needed elsewhere.”

“But I thought this must be heaven.” He pulls back from his father, scrunching his nose. His father’s eyes crinkle at the sight.

“You’re not quite there yet.” The colonel shakes his head and lets him out of his embrace. He walks to Marius’ side and drapes an arm across his shoulder to guide him seemingly deeper into the woods.

In the lightened sky, the trees transform from malignant sculptures into vibrant actors poised in various states of joy beneath their veils of dew. Their branches no longer hindered by shadows reach in ecstasy towards the sun just out of reach. The river giggles now as opposed its cackling earlier in the night. They walk in harmony with each other down a winding path that leads to nowhere.

The morning air fills his lungs with hope even as he tries (and fails) to convince his father to allow him to remain. Their quiet arguing spreads like the ripples of a skipping stone before they lapse into silence for what feels like an hour. As the foliage passes them by, the night grows ever older.

“When I find Marie, we will join you.” The colonel says as the stirrings of early morning bird song flicker into the dying night. The stars have all but retired entirely now, the moon soon to join them.

“I wish I could stay with you.” Marius repeats, almost tripping over himself as his father halts their progress.

The wood, once so intimidating in the dark, proves vulnerable and naked in this new light. Stripped trees scatter around the very edge as dirt and forest debris gradually make way for cobblestone and human construction. His father hugs him one last time, arms fully embracing him with all the force of the years divided from his son. Marius clings to him for as long as he allows.

“Listen, Marius.”

His father retreats as Marius concentrates on the ripple of blue, red, and white in the distance. He cannot distinguish much besides those colors. Fog envelopes what awaits him like a bridal veil. The lack of the tangible in this vision feeds his curiosity and revives his hunger to be reunited with his friends. So on he marches, through bushes and flowers as a frenzied wind whips against his face.

This wind carries his father away. Like Cosette, he suddenly disappears from Marius’ side. He turns in a dizzy dance, desperate to catch sight of him one more time. Yet nature, glorious and intrepid nature, claims the colonel for her own. So on he marches.

He sways on his feet as the sound he originally mistook for bird song grows in volume and prominence with each step forward. The people are singing anthems of liberty; the depths of his bones quiver at the promise within them. So on he marches.

The sky above lightens from the pink-stained hues of a new dawn to dazzling daylight rising above victorious revolution in the streets of Paris. Since Cosette’s departure, she’s the most exquisite creature Marius has seen. So on he marches.

 

\---

 

He stumbles as the skin of the forest ground, rough like Bahorel’s knuckles, transforms into the smooth cobblestone of Parisian streets. The fog lingers in the dawning light, rendering him almost blind. He is as a puppet released suddenly from its strings; uncertain as he wobbles to his destination and purpose.

One more step, and then the fog gives way to the magnificence laying in wait. The grandest barricade ever to be beheld rises like a leviathan from the mist before him. Composed of even finer furniture than that of their makeshift barricade in front of the Café Musain, the glimmer of the mahogany in the increasing sunlight speaks to the true unity of the people in this uprising; the poor and the rich come together at last in the name of their beloved country.

Endless waves of the French flag greet Marius as he slowly moves forward, eyes raised in awe as though he were entering a cathedral. The sun, as it climbs higher in the sky, bathes the scene before him in as much radiance as a holy angel cast in stained glass. Multitudes of people, of all ages and social classes, swarm to the entrance beneath such a grand affair.

An even greater crowd lines the top of the barricade, a people forever rising beyond the grasp of a life that sought to forever hold them down. Yet even amongst the faces of so many strangers, those of his friends distinguish themselves to Marius as vivid as the morning they last spoke before the fall of their uprising.

Gavroche grins like a mad man, still as in his element in paradise as he ever was on the streets. He waves a red flag with all the pride of a war veteran fallen for the glory of his country. Beside him, other children who’ve also outgrown the streets of Paris stand sporting the same brilliant smiles.

Eponine, dear Eponine who died in his arms, sings out to the skies, defiant against the horrors of her life that failed to quell her fierce spirit. Her voice rings out the loudest, and Marius again feels the guilt of responsibility creep up the back of his throat as he draws ever nearer to the friends he realized he never fully appreciated in life.

Bossuet, Feuilly, Bahorel, and Joly stand together proudly waving flags of their own, though Joly does look slightly confused. Courfeyrac, Jehan, and Combeferre stand with mutual expressions of serenity spread across three faces, accepting their fate while illuminated by the eternal incandescence of youthful insurgence.

Of course, the highest peak of the barricade shines brightest of all. Grantaire, outside of the café and lacking a wine bottle by his side, positively glows standing just behind Enjolras. He appears younger then he ever seemed in life, almost as though reborn through death.

Marius cannot bring himself to turn away from Enjolras, one of his closest friends in life, the friend he disappointed in the name of love. Enjolras stands at the very forefront of the barricade, his golden curls resembling a halo even more in the morning light. His blue eyes shine with triumph as he raises a bullet-ridden flag the color of angry men high above his head. He yearns to obtain even a fraction of that conviction for himself.

They are all of them angels ushering in the people to a new world.

Marius loses sight of them only as the entrance to paradise looms over him. He walks still without shoes; brambles and thorns cover his feet, poor substitutes for the boots he once owned. He cannot help but wonder if he is meant to always look like a hopeless vagabond, even in the afterlife. Neither Cosette nor his father never mentioned his appearance. His shirt is ripped, still torn from bullet holes and covered in caked blood. Numerous tears litter his pants, still marked with the mud-stained kisses of the wood he’s left behind. Various petals of roses and violets cling to him the way he clings to the memory of Cosette. He reaches up to find his hair as reckless as usual, uncovering even more petals as he runs one hand through the auburn mess perched on his head like a bird’s nest. He feels like a less dignified Puck as he makes his way into the crowd that gathers at the space beneath the barricade.

He starts at the sensation of strangers staring when he stumbles into a woman with a young boy in front of him. She screeches at the sight of him and hurriedly drags her child away.

He thought himself to be beyond the discomfort of his early days as a law student, when he attempted to hide from the whole of society, including Enjolras and Courfeyrac. Spending time at protests, contributing ideas for pamphlets at the Musain and then, of course, marching in Lamarque’s funeral, transformed him from his former shell of an existence into some being somewhat resembling a politically charged student. He had grown almost comfortable with screaming into crowds and initiating riots.

Yet now, as more of the crowd striding towards heaven pause to take him in, to calculate his worth based on his disheveled appearance and ponder as to what right he could possibly have to be here, Marius finds the fragility of his youth fluttering up his spine in tune to the melancholy song of Cosette’s lyre. He ducks to avoid their eyes but he is too lanky to fully be able to curl in on himself.

He twists himself around to hide from prying eyes but proves too slow to escape from the whispers. He begins to almost sprint away from the entrance, looking at everything but the people around him who come in droves, unyielding with their hungry eyes and even hungrier hands that gesticulate to emphasize his lack of stability. He turns to search for the woods from which he came, only to find them replaced by the fog that once covered the barricade. He curses to himself before aiming towards a dark crevice in the left corner. If nothing else, he can always count on the shadows to protect him. _I will always love you,_ her ghost whispers in his mind and he clenches his hands by his sides.

He reaches the corner and leans on the wood protruding from the bottom of the structure. He is dead, he knows, but still the world spins and sanctity stretches further from his reach. He longs for stability, an anchor to steady him. He yearns for Cosette.

He recalls her hair as golden as her lyre and her eyes as blue as the sky over the countryside. His lips still quiver from the memory of their last kiss. She would know what to do. She would know what to say.

And then he laughs. Guffaws loudly, bending over from the force of his giggles. He never knew Cosette. She was never supposed to love him but she did anyway. He would never see her again, though like a moth to a flame his thoughts continued to dwell on imagined possibilities of their life together. Strolling through the streets of Paris together, hands intertwined. Reading by the light of a fire burning in some strange but opulent fireplace. Kissing and dancing in the fading Sunday afternoon. Little feet eventually joining them on their walks.

Then he recalls his father, the soldier, waiting alone for the mother he cannot remember, and he shakes harder because like Cosette, she too is lost somewhere between life and death and he is helpless to reach her. He imagines the life he might’ve known growing up with the father who adored him and a mother who threw everything of herself into love. Attending church as a family, encouraging him as a student of law. Simply sitting down to share a meal together. He reaches for his father’s hand just as it fades once again from his memory.

He falls to his knees laughing, tears beginning to leak out of the corners of his eyes. He fell in love with the idea of love. He fell in love with a woman who was more than human and so could never be with him. His father waits now for a woman who might be forever lost. He forgets a time when his existence was not little more than a joke as he cackles like a drunken jester.

“Ah, Pontmercy. Late as usual. Care to let me in on the joke?” Bahorel’s voice, full of his good spirit, intrudes upon his laughter in such a way that he manages to stop. The boisterous student’s trademark smirk hides behind the fringe of his long brown hair as he blows a strand of it away from his face. His eyes are full of mirth though he does keep himself at a distance.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” Marius replies, his own voice hoarse and hollow as he picks himself up from the ground, shoulders shaking as he fights to quell the urge to laugh again.

“Christ, did you die in battle with a raging florist?” Grantaire emerges next to Bahorel, a similar amusement in his dancing eyes. “And here we all thought you made it out alive!”

“Well, we all have to die someday. I expect nothing less dramatic from our resident romantic.” Bahorel snorts as he clasps his comrade on the back. The teasing is as warm and familiar as a cup of hot tea, yet, even as Marius smiles back his hands twitch by his side. “Of course I had to come see for myself as soon as I saw him stumble in a terrible impression of you after a night of drinking.”

“I’ve seen him drink before,” Grantaire objects. “While he is no me or even you, good friend, he does do a fairly decent Joly.”

“Oh now this I have to see!” Bahorel beams at him. “Come drink with us. You can still get drunk in heaven. Oh, and everyone is eager to see you, of course.”

“How can you possibly still get drunk in heaven?” Marius asks, rocking on his feet as he picks at the pockets of his pants. He wonders at a lot of things in the afterlife, but this seems the most pertinent question at the moment. 

 “God only knows, really.” Bahorel shrugs. “No one here has to eat or drink but they do and the effects remain the same. Probably just a deity’s sense of humor. Or so the angels can keep themselves amused. But come. I have not had the pleasure to see you drunk in life even once. You do rather owe me for finding you in the darkest corner of the barricade.”

“Yes, come to the café with us,” Grantaire cajoles in his most sing-song voice. “Tell us all about your lady love. I reckon you at least got to see her once before you bit it.”

The cobblestones rush up to meet Marius, tears streaming freely down his face as he doubles over in laughter once again. Bahorel and Grantaire disappear behind a blend of blue, white, and red that overwhelms his vision as he sinks down onto his knees. Their mutual lack of awareness of the entire situation makes him almost writhe.

How long he lies like that, he doesn’t know but suddenly two pairs of arms grasp him from behind his shoulders and two of the strongest men he’s ever known haul him to his feet. Each of them wrap one of his arms around their shoulders so that he stands limply between them like a broken doll.

“Jesus, I think it’s worse than we thought.” Bahorel’s voice comes from his left, almost a whisper now.

“Let’s get him to the café.” Grantaire suggests from his right, face unnervingly close to his own. “We can get some wine in him. It’ll help.”

Marius knows he means well but he hears the “we’ll get him out of the open so he’ll stop making an ass out of himself in public and before anyone else can see him” underneath the words he actually does speak. Hanging between them the way he is, he cannot fight them and even if he could manage to break free, he certainly could never match either Bahorel or Grantaire on their own, let alone paired together. He still can’t stop laughing.

“Marius?” Bahorel prods him gently once the laughter eventually fades.

“Yes. That’s…that’s fine.” He mumbles, keeping his chin close to his chest and his eyes focused on the ground directly before him as he allows them to pull him towards the grand entrance beneath the barricade.

They move gradually enough so that Marius can walk with them, the people still singing as silence settles between the odd trio. He feels as though he were floating, his mind meandering between thoughts of Cosette and his parents alone in the dark. He shuts his eyes to that he might not weep.

 

\---

 

“Marius? Marius!” 

His eyes open at the eagerness with which Gavroche runs over to greet him. The crooked building of the café lurks a mere few feet behind him. Still a child in death, he does not hesitate at the sight of him draped ridiculously between Bahorel and Grantaire. He throws himself around Marius’ waist, provoking him into his first genuine smile since his father.

“Gavroche, how are you?” He tries to lift himself away from the men holding him, who pause to share a brief look of concern over his shoulders. Marius catches Grantaire nodding out of the corner of his eyes before his arms slip from around them both.

He kneels down to fully embrace the youngest member of their group, who still smirks with all the confidence of a man twice his age. The boy’s small shape manages to catch Marius off guard. He realizes how often he took for granted that Gavroche was just a kid in life. He pulls back after a few minutes but he does not let go.

“‘m doing good. Heaven’s so nice. They have all the sweets you could ever want here.” His eyes glaze over and Bahorel and Grantaire both chuckle.

“You better watch out or you’ll become a glutton, Gavroche.” Bahorel nudges him with a grin.  

“It’ll never happen! I’m too quick.” Gavroche proves this as he ducks out from Marius’ arms to run behind Grantaire’s legs before Marius can blink. Grantaire turns around and makes to catch him but Gavroche is already off back in the direction of the barricade before Grantaire so much as turns. He laughs.

 “I’ll see you later! I’m off to tell the others! It’s good to see you, Marius!” The boy gives them one last defiant grin and a matching wave before bolting.

 “Quick as a gun shot, that one.” Bahorel whistles, arms crossed over his chest.

 “Some things never change.” He observes, watching the daylight consume Gavroche’s retreating figure. For the first time that morning, his cheeks flush from the warmth of the sun. He almost smiles.

Grantaire offers him a hand up and he takes it. He declines when the other man offers him his shoulder again. He hugs himself, as if he might contain any future outbursts with his own arms.

“Ready to press onwards, companions?” Bahorel asks, keeping his gaze firmly on Marius. Grantaire mirrors his stance. Marius nods, head slightly bowed.

“Onwards it is!” Grantaire exclaims, moving to the front of the odd trio to lead them to the café.

Marius keeps silent the entire journey, letting the brazen chatter of his two companions fill his ears like the music of Cosette’s lyre. He does not know what awaits him, but he walks steady on his own now, comforted by the light that radiates ever more strongly beside him.

 

\---

 

 The interior of this Café Musain replicates that of the café in Paris on the night preceding Lamarque’s funeral. The brown walls glow red in the candlelight, even during the day. The candlelight shifts in accordance to the various bumps of clumsy patrons. Too many tables and not enough chairs recall the crowds who ripped them apart in the name of revolution the following day.

Marius finds he does not clutch at his own skin as he walks through the front door. He does not think of laughing as memories rush at him as he moves further inside. His hand brushes the wood of the first table at which he ever sat, pouring over German translations back in the early days of his life as a student. He almost trips over the chair that once occupied Courfeyrac as he teased his friend for spending too many nights with his nose pressed to the pages of too many books. Bahorel and Grantaire try to hide their own giggling but fail.

Cigar smoke and the perfume of spilt alcohol permeate through his nose. He inhales deeply, recognizing now how, more than anything else in his life, returning to the Musain restored to its former glory feels like coming home. As he walks behind his friends, climbing up the familiar stairs to the most cherished room of all, Marius allows himself to consider thoughts of achieving peace.

They reach the room where they shared both bottles of wine and thoughts of rebellion to find the tables and chairs, askew as usual, entirely unoccupied, for which Marius offers a prayer of thanks as he sinks into the chair closest to the stairs. He still does not know how he will face the rest of his friends in these circumstances. He sighs as Grantaire and Bahorel make their way to the bar in the back with all the swagger of seasoned drinkers.

“This place will liven up in a minute, just you wait.” Bahorel says, emerging from behind the bar with a dusty old bottle as Grantaire withdraws three mugs from the cabinet above. “Gavroche’s too excited not to announce your arrival to all of the dead of Paris.”

Grantaire, meanwhile, never takes his eyes from Marius as he holds the mugs steady while Bahorel pours. He studies him with all the intensity of an artist’s gaze, sorrow underlying the scrutiny as he attempts to fully flesh out the full spectrum of Marius’ misery.

“Will you let me sketch you like that? It’s not every day I happen across a changeling disguised as a lawyer.” He grins with all the mirth of a clever jester. The smile does not reach his eyes. Blue eyes, almost the same as Cosette’s, which perceive more than what the world assumes of the capabilities held within them. Those eyes center on Marius the entire time he speaks. 

“I must look quite a mess.” Marius nods almost imperceptibly as the other men join him at the table. Grantaire grasps his right wrist briefly before handing him his mug. Marius nods again in thanks for more than just the wine.

“All the best art comes from messes.” Grantaire raises his mug with a smirk. “To Death and all the friends he drags through fields of mud and flowers!”

“I’ll drink to that.” Bahorel clinks his mug against Grantaire’s as Marius raises his as well.

They pass a good twenty minutes in companionable silence as they each seek their own release through the burgundy liquid before them.

“Courfeyrac is going to lose his poor mind at the state of you.” Bahorel’s glee proves as infectious as the wine that slides down Marius’ throat is warm. He flushes at the tickle of a genuine giggle that escapes from his mouth.

“Courfeyrac is always losing his mind at the state of me,” he admits much to the delight of his two companions who burst into laughter.

Marius laughs with them though his heart still aches. He thinks that Cosette would like his friends, as would his father.

Her face haunts him, the music of her voice and lyre lingering like the last lines of a hymn in his thoughts. He cannot fully accept the truth of her parting from him, and so his yearning festers within him like mold. Yet the wine he drinks and the company he keeps prove most commendable in their ability to render his tormented solitude as threatening as a sliver of a phantom. At least, for a little while.

Marius leans on his right elbow, the alcohol turning his limbs from flesh to stone, as Grantaire conjures a pen and parchment from midair. His eyes open and close rapidly as he tries to make sense of what he’s just witnessed, but his mind is too full of wine for any reasonable sort of solution. He supposes it’s not the strangest thing he’s seen since dying.

As soon as their glasses empty, Bahorel rises from his seat to retrieve the bottle of wine as Grantaire sketches and Marius leans further upon his elbow. He doesn’t understand how he can grow so sleepy from alcohol while dead as Bahorel refills their mugs, starting with his first. He smiles gratefully and takes another sip just as the sound of footsteps pound against the stairs like the music of drums.

“It’s true then?”

 “Save some of that for the rest of us!”

 “Marius!”

 Feuilly appears at the top of the stairs alongside Bossuet and Joly, all three of whom sport matching grins. The enthusiasm in their voices is enough to inspire Marius to lift his head and return their good cheer.

“Hello. Sorry I’m late.” He’s drunk enough wine now that his tongue is as loose as the cravat hanging from his neck.

“It seems bad luck has caught up with you too, friend.” Bossuet drags a chair over next to him, clapping him on the shoulder so hard he almost falls forward into the table.

“It’s good to see you again, Marius.” Feuilly, always so kind to him in life, swipes the bottle from Bahorel and drinks straight out of it much to the amusement of the other man, who whistles and claps in appreciation.

“So how did you die then?” Joly eyes him suspiciously, taking in his disheveled appearance. He lingers on the petals in his hair and the mud streaked across his shirt and pants. He outright gapes when he catches sight of his bare feet and the thorns poking out of them.

“Take a drink Joly and pull up a chair.” Grantaire pauses in his drawing to fetch another bottle of wine. He promptly hands the bottle to Joly before resuming his work.

“Ease up on the questions, he’s only just arrived!” Bahorel chides him as Joly shrugs, taking a long gulp from the bottle Grantaire’s just given him.

“I don’t mind.” Marius waves with one hand, another sign of the wine taking effect. The more wine in him, the more he talks with his hands like an overly enthusiastic actor. “I’m not entirely sure but I do remember being dragged through sewers, I think. With open wounds all over my body. So I’d guess infection.”

Joly spits out his wine, face as pale as a porcelain doll and eyes round as tea saucers, before falling out of his chair entirely. Bahorel, Feuilly, and Grantaire nearly piss themselves laughing, while Bossuet takes pity and reaches down to pull Joly up by his coattails. Joly gapes all the more, occasionally making incoherent gasping noises that almost sound like words.

“And here I thought my bullet in the head from a trigger happy National guardsman  was miserable enough.” Feuilly says as the bottle almost slips from his grasp. He leans down to catch it, cradling it close to his chest.

“No I think Marius wins this one.” Bahorel shakes his head, an impish smirk forming in the corners of his mouth. “His was uh, a rather shitty death, one could say.”

Grantaire pounds his fist against Bahorel’s with a wicked grin as the rest of their motley group bursts out in collective amusement.

Joly closes his eyes and shudders at the terrible pun as the others snort and chortle. Bossuet keeps a steady grip on his friend’s shoulder, determined to keep him upright even as he laughs. Marius himself giggles, the wine gradually seeping into every part of him.

He tunes out as the conversation picks up again, his mind addled by the strange comfort provided in his inebriated state. A pair of blue eyes reminds him that he should be more concerned as to how paradise even works. Another sip from his glass and liquid burgundy consumes intangible blue.

“Do my eyes deceive me?”

He vaguely registers a new voice in their midst but he does not register the shift in noise nor the clinking of the arrival of more bottles. Greetings elude his hazy consciousness. Instead, he nearly falls out of his chair as a pair of lean but sturdy arms wrap around him like a noose from behind. Cologne of some kind clogs his nose and the way his own face cracks of its own accord at the smell of it feels as familiar to him as the man currently embracing him.

“Courfeyrac, you’re choking me!” He flails as he tries not to lose his balance entirely.

“You’re already dead, or has no one yet informed of you of that, dear friend?” Courfeyrac falls into their old, familiar teasing as if it were only yesterday that they had shared an apartment. He all but lifts Marius out of his seat to spin him around and properly hug him.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it.” He dares to deadpan because of the spark of sheer joy Courfeyrac ignites in him. Marius thinks he might never let go of Courfeyrac, but that also might be the influence of the wine.

“My God, has death granted you a sense of humor?” Courfeyrac finally releases him. Marius frowns at their lack of embracing but watches as Courfeyrac steps back, hands gesticulating wildly as he poses in a mock swoon. “Heavens be praised, I’ve lived to see this day! Oh, wait.”

Jehan and Combeferre, who Marius finally notices standing just next to his former roommate, both crack a nearly identical, weary smile at Courfeyrac’s antics while the rest of the room overflows with good cheer.

“I am glad to see you again, Marius.”

Combeferre surprises Marius with his friendly greeting. He still hears the other man’s angry protests from just after he threatened to blow up the barricade echo in his mind. (“My life is not yours to risk, Marius!”) But then, Combeferre has always been one of the kindest men he’s ever known. This good man shakes his hand before making his way over to Joly, who remains pale from Marius’ earlier revelation.

(“But, but sewage! And open wounds!” “Careful, Joly, or you might swoon.” Bossuet intercedes.)

“You look like you’ve stumbled out of one of Lord Byron’s poems.” Jehan whispers, eyes shining as he leans in close to pluck a violet petal from Marius’ hair. He places it in his own as though it were a jewel. The poet radiates serenity like the summer moon.

Marius starts when Jehan leans back in to whisper directly into his ear. 

“Find me later. We should talk.”

He says nothing more as he walks over to engage in conversation with Combeferre and Grantaire. But the way his eyes never leave Marius and the gentle lull of empathy that lurks beneath his lyrical voice alerts Marius to the fact that Jehan knows of his struggle currently lost in a sea of wine. Jehan has always been the most observant of them all, finding the keenest pleasure in even the tiniest fragment of a detail, whether in the weight of a word or the veins that run sickly through leaves.

Marius exhales, and as the air leaves his lungs and the fumes of shared alcohol enter them, so too does another small chunk of the shadow he carries within him leave him. The seed of a violet takes its place instead.

 

\---

 

Eponine pauses near the top of the stairs but she does not enter the room, just the same as on the night preceding the barricades. Marius only catches sight of the black of her hair before she disappears and he wonders if she were but a creation of the wine in his thoughts. Regardless, he puts his glass down and makes his excuses to his friends, promising to return later even as they all roll their eyes with good-natured grins. (“Some things never change,” someone, perhaps Grantaire, mutters.)

“You’re coming home with me later, Pontmercy, that’s a promise!” Courfeyrac shouts at Marius as he all but bolts down the stairs. “Or else I’ll tell everyone here about that special collection you keep hidden in your mattress!”

“ _What_?” Grantaire is the one to spit out his drink this time, his voice cracking in disbelief

Marius flushes, briefly aware how much he’s going to regret returning to the café later. Still, the focus of his mind now belongs elsewhere. He stumbles down the last of the stairs and outside of the café, where the fresh air hits him like several bullets to the chest.

“Whoa.” He reaches out to thin air to try and steady himself. He always was a lightweight. The sunlight, once blinding in its radiance crowning the triumphant barricade, now almost burns through his drunken vision.

“Give it a few minutes, monsieur. It’ll wear off soon enough!” Her voice comes from behind him and he spins in search of it. Her delight warms him the same as his friends and the wine had done.

“Where are you, ‘Ponine?” His vision clears as he stills his movements.

“I’m everywhere and nowhere all at once!” She appears in front of him as though materializing out of thin air and he almost jumps out of his skin. She tries not to laugh at him but fails, doubling over in a fit of giggles that render her into a giddy child.

“Still as easy to excite as ever, I see.” She remarks when she finally finishes laughing, her hands crossed over her chest. “Though, you were supposed to live, last time I checked.”

“I’m sorry.”

Those two words hold so much more weight than they can actually bear; the way Eponine’s chest tightens as she inhales sharply tells Marius she knows it. He doesn’t know that he can ever make up to her for all that she’s done for him. She risked her life for him. She gave her life for him. His arms ache as he recalls her dying in them. He can still taste the rain on his mouth. His skin tingles with the memory of her blood. She suffered in his name and he never saw her there. Guilt, yet another ghost for him to shelter in his already crowded heart, shoves its way into his conscious. He fidgets and rocks on his feet, managing at least to quell his desire to play with his hair like a ridiculous school boy.

The longer he stares at her, the more Cosette’s sad smile lurks in that of Eponine. All the wine drains from him as the ground beneath his feet trembles. He sways again but like Bahorel and Grantaire, Eponine is quick to catch him before he falls. He leans on her as she pulls him toward a nondescript alley leading away from the Café Musain.

“We should get out of the open. Too many nosy strangers on these streets.” She has her arm around his waist. He tries to voice his thanks. She stops him with a shushing hand gesture.

“Don’t speak. Not yet.” She helps him disappear into the alley. “We’re almost there.”

They emerge in front of the building they used to share in life, the rotting wood of it still crooked even now. Marius allows Eponine to lead him into the building and up the stairs to his old room. The gray of his walls and the same thin, barely held together mattress greet him like old friends. He has never felt so relieved to see the cramped space.

She leads him to his mattress and gently lays him down upon it before moving to sit in the chair in the corner.

“No, please. Stay with me.” He pleads though he knows he has no right to ask anything else of her, this strong girl who’s carried the weight of him in life and death. This girl who fears nothing, always dreaming of a better life. He needs her strength now, needs a hand to hold while he tries to keep himself together.

She smiles as she walks back over, her eyes shining down on him like a pair of stars. She is lovely but he still does not love her; not the way that she loves him, not the way he still loves Cosette. Tremors run through his heart as he both wishes for Eponine to find hope and for Cosette to return to him somehow. 

Eponine settles down next to him, placing a hand upon his arm. They remain like this for at least an hour. He’s still uncertain as to how time passes by in this world; all he knows is that he feels it passing through his bones. He closes his eyes and wonders if he can drift off to sleep.

“Marius?” She whispers, clutching at his arm. “Marius, I am sorry about Cosette.”

His eyes open at the mention of her name. His body quakes with the force of her still lodged in his heart. Eponine whimpers as he shivers and tears again rain down his face. (He cannot distinguish between the tears that join his a moment later.) All the aches of his meanderings in the wood sweep into him like a ferocious gust out on the moors.

“She told me everything. She was so kind to me even as I was cruel to her in our childhood.” Eponine releases his arm as she clutches her knees and rocks on the mattress. “She helped lead me here, though I don’t deserve it.”

 "You deserve to be here. You deserve every happiness, Eponine.” He shakes but he manages to sit up on his elbows. He shuts his eyes to stop his tears. “I am sorry I cannot provide you with it.”

“I know.” She takes his right hand and gently squeezes it. “I’ve known almost as long as I’ve known you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Eponine.” He sniffles and grips the sheets as tangled as the ones in his apartment back in life. “I wish I could have done more.”

Sunlight like Cosette’s tender hair brushes against his face through the window, illuminating the dust motes of his past mistakes. He should have realized that his father loved him sooner. He should have realized Eponine’s feelings for him and been a better friend. He should have never doubted in Enjolras or the revolution. He should never have left his father to wait for his mother alone in the woods.

“Marius, stop it!” She tugs on his hand like she wants to pull him in for a hug but then thinks better of it. “You did the best you could. I wish you could see the light you brought to my life. Without you, I might have ended up like my mother. Or worse, my father.”

He falls back onto the mattress, curling his legs beneath him as if he were a child again. She slides down next to him, keeping enough of a distance so as to not mislead any passers by who might happen across his open door but close enough to stroke his cheek.

“I’ve made my peace with my wretched life. I am happy here.” She smiles though her hand shakes against his skin. “I just want you to be happy too.”

“It’s impossible to be happy without her,” he whimpers as she winces.

“Well, you’re going to have to try.” She squeezes his hand again. “Trust me, I know.”

He opens his mouth to respond when her eyes jump from his own to glint at the doorframe behind him. She sits up as quickly as she appeared to him earlier on the stairs.

“I’m sorry, Marius.” She all but leaps from his mattress, eyes never once leaving the door frame as she moves away from him. “I just remembered that Bahorel promised to teach me boxing today.”

She pauses before hurriedly coming over to kneel by his side.

“We’ll talk more later, I promise.”

She briefly places her hand in his hair before she is gone, rustling out of his room as though moving past another body standing in the doorway. Marius feels as though someone has put a fist into his stomach. He feels more exposed in Eponine’s absence, chest tightening as he clutches at his sheets so hard he almost tears them. He stops shaking only because trepidation pins his limbs to his mattress. A sliver of red catches in the light through his window.

“Enjolras.”

“Marius.”

His name spoken in that voice, that incendiary voice that could incite crowds to riots or bring even the rowdiest of students back into line, gives him cause to roll over and begin to pick himself up again.

Enjolras takes this as a cue, and strides over to offer him his hand. Marius hesitates but eventually accepts it, pulling himself up back into a standing position with the other man’s help.

He does not expect the typically reserved man to pull him into a hug almost as bone crushing as the one Courfeyrac gave him. The outburst of sudden affection almost overwhelms him as he clings with fervor to his dear friend.

“I’m sorry I let you down. I am so - ” He whispers like a mantra into Enjolras’ shoulder.

“Marius, enough apologizing.” The familiarity of the exasperation in Enjolras’ voice grants Marius the courage to meet his gaze. He appears as bold and as ethereal as he ever did in life, his mouth set in a severe line though his blue eyes (will he ever escape from blue eyes?) crinkle in amusement.

They both pull away from the hug at the same time, though they each keep a hand on the other’s shoulder, a habit from life unshakable even in death.

 “It is I who should be apologizing, anyway.” Enjolras’ golden curls fall in his face as he glances toward the window, the sorrow of a guilty soldier written clear in his face. “I’ve gotten everyone killed, now.”

Marius finds that his own sorrows diminish in the face of his friends’ miseries. His own aches lessen as he finds in Eponine and Enjolras’ doubts a new monarchy to rally against. He presses his hand into Enjolras’ shoulder more firmly as he speaks with the passion that once possessed him in the streets of Paris. 

“Enjolras, you lead us but it is all of us who decided to follow. You offered us the chance to leave and no one took it. We all chose to die with you, not because of you.”

Enjolras’ mouth lessens from a hard line into something resembling a crooked curve. The tension in the lines around his eyes relaxes as he squeezes Marius’ shoulder in turn.

“I am still sorry about, well. You know.” He does not meet Marius’ gaze as he says this, but Marius appreciates the awkward sincerity in his voice all the same.

“About Cosette?” He still utters her name like a prayer. But after his encounter with Eponine, and in the presence of Enjolras now, he does not allow himself to fall upon his knees because of it.

“She didn’t tell you her real name?” Enjolras’ eyes cloud over with confusion.

 “No.” Marius’ feels the familiar tendrils of numbness creep up at Enjolras’ question. “Wait, how do you know she has another name?”

Enjolras gazes upon him with a rekindled sadness in his eyes.

 “She led us all here. Most of our friends thought her merely an angel. Courfeyrac attempted to flirt with her.” He snorts, curls bouncing in time with the movement of his head. “But I knew who she was as soon as I looked upon her. I can see why you lost your breath over such a…woman.”

Something in the way Enjolras pronounces ‘woman’ causes Marius to stumble again. Enjolras moves his hand from his shoulder to steady him on his back.

“Please, be honest with me Enjolras. Who is she?” Marius pleads, his free hand scratching at the fabric of his pants as he tries to keep himself from trembling.

Enjolras frowns, glancing back towards the window before looking back at Marius. Ice settles in his veins as the room appears to shrink around them.

“She called herself Persephone.”

Marius blinks. He knows the name, knows that Persephone belongs to Hades. Queen of the Underworld. Surely, this is just some cruel coincidence, just another joke through which fate can make a mockery of his existence. He runs a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as he struggles to reconcile what he knows of Cosette with the idea of her as a goddess condemned to the Underworld.

His hand drops from his face the moment he recalls her warning to him, how he would never understand if she told him her true name. He pales and starts to rock on his feet. Enjolras, watching him carefully, helps steady him by moving his hand back to his shoulder and pressing down firmly, though not unkindly.

They remain in silence as Marius tries to express himself. He desperately yearns for more wine. 

“I don’t understand.” His voice is as small as that of a child.

“Marius, listen. The after life is not what it seems. There is so much more to this world than the people on Earth could imagine. Even the people here still need protection.”

Paradise spins beneath his feet with all the grace of Courfeyrac after an excessive amount of wine. Death has courted everything he knows and transformed him into a wandering vagabond. And Marius courts Death still by loving desperately his beloved Queen.

Enjolras anchors him to the room with his unyielding gaze, those eyes that burn bright blue.

“There is much yet I do not understand, myself. Will you help us? Will you take your place with me?”

In spite of everything, he hears Enjolras and he realizes that though he is dead, he is still living. He lifts his head up and nods.

Marius steps forward to drape his arm across Enjolras’ shoulder as Enjolras returns the gesture. They share a smile before stepping out into the light together.

Her voice floats beneath the undercurrent of his thoughts.

_“You will never be alone again.”_

 

 

  

 

    

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This was supposed to be solely based on Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"/elements of Romanticism but the story grew to include Greek mythology as well. Because of this, this fic is the longest piece of creative writing I've ever completed. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, and I hope to write more in this universe soon. 
> 
> I took the liberty in naming Marius' mother Marie because her actual name is never mentioned in the book, I like to think Marius' parents are just as romantic as he is, and because I like to think Marius takes a lot after his mother.


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